...and one more video... it couldn't load in the last post

You gotta jump, jive, and then you wail

I know this is going to be a weak post with written information. But, I will compensate (or at least try to to) with pictures and video. Here's hoping I get more time.... someday....

And when she dances, oh brother! She's a hurricane in all kinds of weather

This will be partly an update on life in Colorado and a small part will be an update on Violet. Since I don't really have a full fledged blog entry shaped in my head, I'm afraid this will be a short entry. I just wanted to write down something for Leap Year Day (or Sadie Hawkins Day, however you want to look at it.)

Scott and I arrived at our (my) new house in Pagosa Springs on Jan 22. We spent a good week blitz'ing the joint in setting up our furniture, unpacking big boxes and moving the containers of storage things into one of the MANY closets the house has. I do like my new place for its large kitchen, many closets and the many windows for lots of sunshine. The thing I can't stand? NO ONE SEEMS TO KNOW MY STREET EXISTS!!

I don't know how old my house is or how old the paved road is, for that matter. And, yes, I have to say "paved" road because apparently, that is a luxury in this town. Before I moved from Mountain Home, I filled out a fowarding address card for the post office so that I can get our family's mail. I already knew that the new house in CO did not have a mail box, so I called the Pagosa Post Office and explained the situation and tried to find out the process of how to open a post office box. As it turns out, I could not do this by phone or internet, but had to physically be there to fill out the paperwork. Fine. I then told them that I already had the fowarding address card filled out and to please hold my mail and NOT send anything back. They said, "sure."

The day after Scott and I arrived in the town (after two days of the worst driving experiences I've EVER encountered, not to mention this was while driving Scott's car and he driving a 24' truck with a trailer attached) I go to the post office to open the post office box. And it has been a friggin' nightmare since. This place has managed to let my mail collect in a pile a good week after I opened the new box and was told BY THEM that they would leave a note saying 34 Little Pine Lane mail goes to my PO Box. And then they claimed that the pile of mail was because I had a hold on it, which I specifically asked them to lift after opening the PO Box. And then, I'm missing a MASSIVE pile of magazines, personal mail and other whatnots, while only receiving 3 junk flyers and a catalog for 2611 when I am 2411. It took me 5 phone calls and then specifically asking for the supervisor to finally get any headway through this mess. I have yet to be home since speaking to the manager, so I have no idea whether or not they have made a dent in fixing the problem.

This has been the biggest "no one knows where I live" problem. A small one is that the Pizza Hut claimed to not be able to deliver me a pizza because they didn't know where my street was, and me explaining that I can SEE THEIR STORE FROM MY BACK PATIO gave me no benefit. I do eventually have to learn the names of the streets that are poorly labeled and be able to give directions, but for now I keep telling people, "it's where the new Wal-Mart will be built" and then they have a small inking of a clue. Evidently, that's a big scuttlebutt around these parts.

In the middle of all of this, Violet did turn 1 and we did celebrate, albeit in a small fashion. I do plan on posting the pictures of the party, but I have been at my home a total of 17 days since Jan 22, so I've been mostly discumbobled.

In other Violet news, she is trying out the thought of standing unassisted, though so far the record has been 5 seconds. She loves holding the iPhone up to her ear and then mine, but now really, really likes to hold the thing up to her ear while music is playing and takes the opportunity to dance. She does love clapping, has started to show a real understanding of comic timing and goes into a joyous fit when she sees her Daddy while we Skype on the computer or the phone.

In about a month, she and I will be flying out to NJ for my annual Met Home Opener tradition, and so that she can meet my friends. I truly hope it works out that I get someone to host a party for me so that I can gather a good majority of my friends in one place for one afternoon, otherwise I'll be missing a good number of people. There's no way I can make individual visits, and there's very little in compromising that. I do hope to introduce her to some authentic east coast food, but mostly, I hope that she and I survive our first flight without Scott. Needless to say, it's tons easier to have a set of parents for the one child, rather than the 1:1 ratio we'll have in late March. Luckily, it'll be a non-stop flight.

They say it's your birthday, We're gonna have a good time

It's been a year. A whole year. A year since Scott and I took our middle-of-the-night trip to the base hospital to get the Violet party started. It didn't actually start until the late afternoon on the 11th, but, eh, details =)

And to try to summarize the year would be nearly impossible. But I can tell you:

• Violet got to travel. A lot. More than I thought a little infant could. Approximately 21,083 miles. And in all of the traveling, there were only 3 flights, two of which were to Waco, KY to visit the in-laws
• She's already been to a wedding
• She has charmed every TSA agent and flight attendant she's ever met
• She's on her 3rd house in two different states
• She likes remotes and phones, and she loves music and I think she's starting to dance
• She LOVES this green blanket my Mom made for her and it seems to be her Linus blanket
• She's great at snagging glasses and already knows how to lay a well-placed back hand slap
• She waves to the world whenever she wakes up and loves to stick out her tongue whenever possible

There is so much more, but that's what I've got off the top of my head and I felt like I needed to jot down something to mark the little girl's first birthday. And tomorrow, we'll have my sister's girls over for cupcakes, Disney sing-a-longs and then a sleepover (mostly because my sister and her husband are going to a Valentine party).

Needless to say, Violet not only owned, but flourished during her first year on this planet. She's utterly amazing.

Christmas Eve will find me, Where the lovelight gleams, I'll be home for Christmas, If only in my dreams

 

As Christmas time nears and we contemplate what to do for our first Christmas with Violet, I've been thinking more and more about where I consider "home". Yes, it's where the heart is; yes, it's also where I hang my hat. But one of the questions often asked of where I'll be while Scott is in Thule is, "Oh, Colorado, is that home?" and the much longer response is far too involved to give to the casual conversationalist.

To me, home has to be 129 Wyckoff Ave, though it no longer exists. I lived 6 years in Japan, another 6 years in Fort Lee, but Wyckoff was where we spent the most time growing up and making the friends I still hold dear today. We survived Hurricane Floyd, the Blizzards of '96 and spent a total of 15 years celebrating all kinds of milestones together. Since my parents sold the place in 2005, I've known that I'll never be able to go "home" again. Especially now since the new owner tore the whole damn place down to make another monstrosity of a house that will hopefully be someone's new place to make memories.

I'm sad that I'll never be able to bring Violet to my old home to show her where I threw the stapler to make the dent in the laundry room door, or the fireplace my siblings and I huddled around to have our Dad teach us how to play poker with Lite Brite pieces on a snowy Sunday, or the cozy kitchen our family spent good quality time together. I know I'm waxing nostalgic, but I think that's what usually happens around the holidays.

And now as a grown-up with my own family, I've been preoccupied with ideas of how to make a home for Lady Violet. Within her first 5 years of life, she will already have 2 different houses in Mountain Home, a place in Pagosa Springs and at least one other home in Japan under her belt. And being that Scott has another 9 years before he can retire from the Air Force, more moves will most definitely be in our future. Violet won't really have a building she can point to and call "home", but I will do everything I possibly can to give her a home-feeling wherever she goes.

Because of all of the moving I've done in my life thus far, I remember thinking I just wanted to find a home and live in it for as long as I had children to raise. But I now realize that not only is that not really a feasible childhood dream to accomplish, I should and will continue to count my EVERY blessing that I have a family that can make me feel at home wherever we go or however many times I have to pack boxes.

We're leaving together, But still it's farewell.. It's the final countdown

We have made it to December. We should be just concentrating on Christmas and decorations, but I'm finding it hard to psych myself up for Violet's first Christmas being that we have to break it all down within a matter of weeks to pack up for Thule/Pagosa Springs.

Since hearing the news of Scott's orders, I keep reminding myself that when he and I discussed the possibilities of what could happen in our first years of marriage, this was definitely a possible reality. And I also keep reminding myself that a year is not that long, especially when factoring in Scott's leave time, the visits to my parents' and the support I'll be getting from my sister and her network of mothers. And yet, the freaking out is starting to set in.

It's partially because we are now in the month before all of the crazy transitioning is going to happen. It's also partially because Scott and I got to see the house I'll be living in Pagosa Springs. And another part is due to the great progress we made over the weekend in clearing the garage from all of the random boxes from my move from TN, Scott's move from ND and our move from the first apartment he and I shared across town. We have whittled things down to very manageable groupings of "stuff" and I feel better prepared for the packing that will happen after the Christmas holidays (and after the short trip to KY to visit with Scott's family.)

But something else set me off this past weekend. The reality of a year apart. The realizations that things will be slightly (if not significantly) harder than I'm believing (pretending?) it to be. A day sidelined by hurt feelings, stewing about it and the eventual discussion and a so-so resolution. I'm still trying to get over it, but my own self-image problems (I'm still about 20-30 lbs away from where I'd like to be), in addition to me being mad at myself for being so ticked off by the origin of the hurt feelings. All in all, I'm starting to question my confidence.

I know I'm just allowing myself the freak out in the hopes that if I mostly get it out of my system now, I won't be crippled by it when things need to get done. People have asked if I'll be ok and I'd say, "sure, no problem" and a really good friend called me separately and gently asked again "are you sure", knowing that sometimes a PR line is not the whole truth. I said, "yes", and I still think I was telling the truth at the time. It's still mostly the truth now.


The the other part is that I'm starting to definitely freak the f-- out and letting the slightly small things get me down.

Hello! Is it me you're looking for?

I'm back after a long, news-packed hiatus. I've been leaking updates here and there on Facebook and Twitter since those mediums allow for the hurried, half-thoughts, but because Violet is FINALLY taking a decent morning nap, I feel the urge to blog away my thoughts of the last couple of months. There are certain subjects I'll expand on in another entries, but here are the basics.

I posted two months ago that Scott will be in Greenland without family for a year, starting Jan/February-ish of next year. There are lots of cons and only a few significant pros to this, but overall, we are happy with the timing and location. It's better for him to volunteer to go now to this location, rather than being told at a later time to go to some place like South Korea. I'll be ok with the separation for the most part, and I am thankful that Violet is too young to realize all that's going on. If she were older and all of a sudden Scott wasn't around, I would constantly feel my heart breaking anytime she asked where Daddy went. So, instead, she'll be having fun with her cousins and her Aunt Heather and Uncle Jason, as well as visits to her overjoyed Grandparents.

Which leads me to the next bit of news. After considering a lot of different aspects, mostly financial, of the two possible areas of where to live in Colorado, I think I have finally decided on going to live in my sister's town of Pagosa Springs, CO. It's partially because of the cost of living would be cheaper down there as compared to the suburbs of Denver, but mostly it is so Violet can have a lot of children close to her age to run around with, including her very excited cousins. My sister has already checked out a possible house for me to rent and going by her description, it sounds wonderful. I'm looking forward to this location because this would be the first time Heather and I have lived anywhere near each other since she moved away for college back in 1998.

And after the year(ish) in Colorado, Violet and I will be packing up to go to Yokota AFB in Japan for Scott's next assignment. This was our top choice and we were pleasantly surprised we got it, considering that Scott didn't turn in his list of preferred orders until a couple weeks past the deadline (it was a misunderstanding of when we were supposed to do it. Who would have thought that some details of the military are confusing? haha.)

So far, the only things I know about Yokota is that it's about three hours away from where I lived outside of Tokyo, I've visited the base as a young child because my parents were friends with the base chaplain at the time and we already know one of the captains for the air traffic control. I will be spending a chunk of my time in Colorado trying to regain my Japanese with the help of my Dad (and a computer program or two.) There are so many details of how to move our stuff, what we can take, about our cars which we cannot take with us, and so many other things, that I decided having a separate notebook to jot down questions and answers would be necessary. Yes, an old school spiral notebook with pages and pens! I remember more when I write things down, rather than just reading it on a screen. Call me old fashioned ;p

With Greenland and Japan on our horizon, Scott and I are still trying to figure out if we can have a wedding celebration like we wanted. It'll be tricky to try to plan this. It may happen sooner than I think or not at all, and there are a couple of families I'd like to give as much heads up time as possible to ensure their presence. But at this point, I just don't know. This does bum/stress me out because I wanted to have as 'normal' of a celebration with friends and family, as belated as it is, but it may not be in the cards for us. I know there are more important things to concentrate on, but it's still something I wish and will try my darndest to make happen, within reason.

Violet is growing like a weed and is starting to show lots of personality. I've been trying to be diligent in updating her own FB page with pictures of her cuteness, but I've been neglectful of posting written updates of what's she's been doing. She's doing her army-crawl at a pretty fast clip now, but has yet to master the hands-and-knees crawl. She's got two bottom teeth, front and center, and I thought it was because of those (and possibly others trying to break the gumline) that was making her thoroughly impossible to deal with several days this past week. Now I think it was because she had a scratchy throat and was fussing big-time during her bottles because she was having difficulty swallowing. Why do I think this? Because couple days since she started fussing like mad, I woke up with a scratchy throat, and this was the morning after she was finally in better spirits to try to give me kisses. However, her version of 'kisses' is to just lick my mouth and nose. (She's still learning.) So, I think I got her scratchy throat germs from that and after a couple days, we are both doing better and are a lot less cranky for Scott. More specifics on Violet in future posts.

Well, I think that's a lengthy, but good first step back from the non-communication. I'm hoping to have more time for more detailed updates soon. It all depends on Lady Violet! ;p

Happy Clocks-Fall-Back weekend, everyone!